Curfews and Pleas for Unity Keep Sectarian Retaliation at Bay in Baghdad

By ALISSA J. RUBIN; John F. Burns and Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Basra, Hilla, Diyala and Kirkuk.

Published: June 15, 2007

With curfews imposed in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities and with heightened security across Iraq, Thursday passed with few violent incidents despite the destruction on Wednesday of the minarets of a holy shrine in Samarra sacred to Shiites.

The shrine's golden dome had already been demolished in a bombing in February 2006 by Al Qaeda, an attack that set off months of brutal sectarian killings.

While the destruction of the minarets spurred several attempts to burn and damage Sunni mosques in a turbulent area just south of Baghdad and in Basra, it appeared that the strenuous efforts by political and religious leaders to discourage reprisals were largely successful.

There were four attacks on Sunni mosques south of Baghdad, three of them in Iskandariya and one in Mahaweel, where most of the building was demolished, the local police said. In Basra, several attempts to damage Sunni Arab mosques were halted, and residents held unity demonstrations led by Shiite and Sunni clerics.

In sharp contrast to the aftermath of last year's attack, in which Shiite mobs fired rocket-propelled grenades at Sunni Arab mosques, destroying 27 in Baghdad in 24 hours, the repercussions on Thursday were mild.

Five unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad, far fewer than the police have found daily for several weeks, according to an Interior Ministry official.

But there were several mortar attacks in Baghdad. The most damaging occurred in midafternoon in the Green Zone, where most American and high-ranking Iraqi officials live, when seven mortar shells rained down, the Interior Ministry said. One exploded near the gate to the Rashid hotel, just across the street from the Convention Center, where Parliament meets.

The blast occurred just 50 minutes before a news conference with the deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte; the United States ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker; and the secretary of state's coordinator for Iraq, David M. Satterfield. It killed one person and wounded two others, according to the Interior Ministry official. An American military official would say only that there were casualties, and that no Americans were hit.

Iraqi and American officials said the minarets' destruction in Samarra also appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda, and that the explosives that destroyed them were placed inside each minaret. The attackers used the same kind of explosives and method as in last year's bombing, Ambassador Crocker said.

The explosives consisted of two improvised explosive devices planted under each minaret, each with more than 50 pounds of explosives, an official in the governor's office in Samarra said. ''This work is not easy,'' the official added. ''It can't be done quickly.''

The shrine's security has been a delicate issue since the explosion last year destroyed the dome. Shiites have called for its reconstruction, but security problems and worries about sectarian clashes delayed repairs.

A few days before the latest explosion, a new police force was sent from the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry as a prelude to reconstruction. The guards surrounding the shrine ceded to the new police, but those inside refused to leave, according to an American military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Negroponte and Mr. Crocker praised the efforts of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his government, including Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders, to handle the situation in Samarra and their efforts to bring about a broader reconciliation. Mr. Negroponte was ambassador to Iraq from mid-2004 to 2005.

The two ambassadors struck a noticeably more conciliatory tone toward the Iraqi government than have other American officials, who have taken the Iraqis to task for failing to make long-promised changes in the Constitution and pass a law to allocate oil revenues.

The two men also said they had avoided any discussion of deadlines for accomplishing these and other goals, even though Congress is threatening to cut off funds for the war unless Iraq makes significant progress.

''Obviously, our political debate is extremely transparent. I can't imagine that they would not be observing it, and watching it.''

But he added, ''It goes a bit far to talk about specific deadlines, drop-dead dates and that kind of thing.''

The United States military also announced that the case of Lt. Col. William H. Steele had been referred for court-martial.

Colonel Steele, 51, an army reservist from Prince George, Va., had command responsibilities at Camp Cropper, one of the detention centers at the Baghdad airport. He stands charged of mishandling classified information, storing it on his computer, possessing pornography, and giving special privileges to an Iraqi interpreter and carrying on an inappropriate relationship with her.

The most serious charge, that he ''aided the enemy'' by allowing unmonitored use of a cellphone by detainees, carries the death penalty.